


God Shows His Face Farther Up the Road

by FormerBunhead



Series: The Fox & Flea [3]
Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Happy Ending, Mild Smut, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27741409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FormerBunhead/pseuds/FormerBunhead
Summary: Here's our happy ending! You can view this as either Part 3 of The Fox & Flea, or an epilogue / bonus track of sorts. It's not necessary to the overall narrative and is probably a bit too tidy. But it was quite satisfying to write, and I hope it's a lovely payoff.This story has been a joy and a balm to me during an insanely difficult season. Thank you so much for reading.
Relationships: Claire & Fleabag (Fleabag), Fleabag & Priest (Fleabag), Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag), claire & priest
Series: The Fox & Flea [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2012479
Comments: 29
Kudos: 44





	God Shows His Face Farther Up the Road

* * *

The first time he asks her to marry him is five days after their initial reunion. He’s aware it’s ridiculous, but he does like to make a splash. Besides, he knows what he wants, so why waste any more time pretending he doesn’t? 

It’s the Thursday they’re having dinner at her sister’s place, which is unexpectedly fun, mostly thanks to Klare's jovial warmth. He's having a lovely time. That is, until Claire corners him in the kitchen to ask about his _intentions_ . She says it just like that: “What are your intentions?” As though they’re characters in some tacky modern adaptation of a Regency novel.  
  
He blusters for a bit while she glares at him, arms crossed, holding her wine glass like she’s ready to toss it in his face if he gives the wrong answer. “I’d like to make her happy for as long as she’ll let me,” he finally says, which is the truth. Claire purses her lips in what he now knows is her version of a smile, then rolls her eyes and stalks away. That went well, he thinks with something like sardonic relief.

When they’re walking back to his place that night, he takes Phoebe’s hand. He tells her how happy he is. “I’d like to make you happy, too, for as long as you’ll let me,” he says, repeating his words to Claire. She smiles. 

And suddenly, it’s as if he’s possessed by the ghost of Mr. Darcy or who the fuck ever from the aforementioned comedy of manners. He doesn’t know Austen very well, but that guy sure seems like the type to make an impulsive, off-the-cuff romantic declaration. He goes with it.  
  
“I’m hoping you’ll let me make you happy forever,” he blurts out. “I’d like to marry you, Phoebe.”

She laughs, then quickly schools her face when her eyes meet his. “Oh shit,” she says. “You’re serious.” 

They stop walking. She looks amused, and freaked out, and slightly upset.  
  
“Yeah, I am,” he says, going for broke. “I know it’s fast, but I’ve loved you for, like, a thousand trillion years. Please. Just… put me out of my misery.”

“Wow,” she says, trademark sarcasm written all over her features. “Are you asking me to marry you, or kill you? I’d currently prefer the latter. This is the worst proposal I’ve ever heard.” 

“Have you gotten many?” he lobs back before he can overthink it. 

She gives him the side-eye. “Enough,” she says, “to tell when it’s hasty and ill-advised.” 

“Is that a no then?” he asks, a bit desperate. He can feel himself ramping up into low-grade mania. He wants to get on his knees and beg her, or threaten to fling himself into traffic, or climb a light pole and shout his love into the sky. For some crazy reason, he thought she’d say yes right away and there would be tears and kisses and music swelling in the background while stars fell all around them. Isn’t that how it usually happens in period dramas? Fuck _Pride and Prejudice_ , giving him ideas.

She slowly nods her head at him like her answer should be obvious, wearing a sweetly taunting smile. “It’s a no,” she confirms, patting his cheek. “Now settle down.” 

“I’d like to!” he shoots back. “That’s the whole point!” He rakes his hands through his hair, exasperated, embarrassed. At least it’s now standing on end; she's obsessed with his shaggy head. If she won’t marry him for love, maybe she’ll marry him for his sexy Wolverine hair.

She gazes at him, trying to gauge something. “You really want this,” she says. 

“Yes,” he replies earnestly, taking her hands. “I want to marry you.” 

She looks down, then back up at him, cocking her head. “Don’t worry,” she says. “It’ll pass.” Flippant as all hell. 

She grins at him, then takes off running down the street, laughing. 

He sighs and follows her. He knew exactly what he was getting with this one. He has no one to blame but himself.

* * *

They cram a lot of life into the next year, making up for lost time. And over the course of it, he proposes a dozen times. Give or take, anyway - he stops counting after a while, because she keeps saying no.

It’s not like he thinks about it all the time. He’s caught up in her, in their easy joy, what they’re building together. But sometimes the light hits her face in a particular way, or regular day-to-day stuff gets this hazy glow to it, or she smiles at him like he’s her favorite thing in the whole world. In those moments, it overwhelms him, this desire to live and die by her side. And marriage is the only way he knows to make that happen. So he keeps asking.

He tries out different methods, alternating between serious and light-hearted, hoping something will stick. He writes her cute notes and tucks them into her pockets. He scribbles “MARRY ANDREW DON’T FORGET” on different dates throughout her diary to find like Easter eggs. He tries bribing her with sex and perfectly cooked rashers of bacon. Sometimes he just straight-out asks her in earnest.

Her cheeky replies crack him up, but the answer is always the same. They’re both enjoying the game, but he’s starting to wonder if he should take her refusals more personally. Well, he’s nothing if not dogged. It’s one of his worst qualities. So he keeps after it.

He keeps asking.

He asks her when they’re doing the washing up, tossing the dish towel over his shoulder and coming up behind her at the sink, squeezing her around the waist and whispering into her ear. 

He asks her on Sunday mornings when they’re sitting on the couch in a warm shaft of sunlight, him reading a paperback, her creasing her brow at the Sudoku with her feet in his lap and the cat (her refuses to call her Bernie) curled up between them. 

He asks her during sex. After sex. Before sex, a few times, but that’s even less effective than usual, he finds. 

He asks her when they’re trawling Portobello Market one weekend, knocking into all the blundering tourists. She picks out a vintage coat so garish that he can’t wait to hate it every day, forever. Later, she spots a Moroccan rug rolled up in the corner of a stall and tells him they should get it for the spare room in his flat. That’s when he knows she’s moving in with him.

He asks her while they’re painting said spare room into an office for her, and putting up bookshelves for all her shit, and cursing a blue streak while they maneuver her favorite couch inside. It nicks a dent in the soft old wood of the narrow door frame, and he loses his temper. She knows he really fucking loves original mouldings, she tells him, but he can’t expect her to want to spend the rest of her life with someone who yells at her about it. She has a point.

He asks her after she meets his friends at the pub and he’s once again awed by her effortless ability to twist people around her finger simply by existing. Marco pulls him aside before they leave and gives him a hug and his blessing. He’s moving back to Italy for work, but jokes that he’ll return for Andrew and Phoebe’s wedding, “not that she’s ever going to agree to it, mate.” He smiles ruefully because it’s true.

He asks her when they’re getting into bed one night and she finds Buffalo Bill folded up neatly under her pillow. He thinks she’s quite close to saying yes that time, but instead she throws the shirt on, shags him within an inch of his life, and collapses against him with a contented sigh. It feels like a pretty okay consolation prize for rejection, honestly.

He asks her on the morning they have brunch at a truly terrible restaurant, and he jokes that they should open one of their own. She stares into space for a while, then looks at him and says, “Hmm. Maybe.” He’s not sure if she’s talking about the marriage proposal or the business one, but he doesn’t really care either way. They grin at each other and start daydreaming up a cafe that’s also a bookshop, where they can hire folks he knows through his work, and she can combine two things she only sort of likes - spreadsheets and customer service - into an approximation of a fulfilling job. “It can’t be named anything chic, though,” she says. “We have to call it something uncool, like one of those old-timey Tolkien pubs in Oxford with a cheeky alias.” He thinks for a minute. “The Hound and Hunter?” he suggests, referencing her foxglove tattoo. “Or The Priest and Harlot?” She laughs. But they’re off and running. 

He asks her when they bicker about what to watch on television. About what to order for dinner. About how little she does around the house, and his irritating fits of pique regarding the dishes growing mold in the spare room and her appalling lack of hoovering. He asks her whenever they fall apart, and again when they make up. 

He asks her after they have a row so enormous that he can’t even remember how it started, but it ends with tears and slamming doors and her going to stay at a friend’s for two days. It’s the worst 48 hours of his life, and that’s really saying something. She doesn’t answer his calls, but her host Belinda - the grand dame among her mates, and his favorite - sends him a text. It just says, “Be patient.” And sure enough, on the morning of the third day, he wakes up to find her sleeping next to him. “Fuck you, then,” he murmurs, spooning himself around her. “Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” she says, eyes still closed. “I’m only here because Belinda can’t make a proper cup of tea to save her life.” But she never leaves again.

He asks her on the afternoon they sit in a solicitor’s chambers, scribbling signatures on a mountain of paperwork that formalizes their business agreement and nets them a crumbling old building, a former hotel around the corner from his flat. He can’t believe they’re actually doing this, making a go of the bookshop-cum-cafe, but they are. Everything is in place and it’s real and it’s wonderful. He writes the name they’ve settled on, over and over, filling every page with ribbons of script that bind them together: The Fox and Flea. 

He asks her on the morning she stumbles into their room with a wild look in her eyes, mutely thrusting something into his hand with a stiff arm. He studies it. There are two dark pink lines in the little window in the middle of the strip of plastic. He looks up at her, not daring to breathe. She nods, and a ghost of a smile hovers over her lips. They both start laughing hysterically, and he pulls her down next to him. “Oh my God,” he keeps saying, over and over, looking at her in shock and wonder. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” 

“Now you have to marry me,” he says smugly, later that day, after she’s been sick three times and groused at him that the smell of his aftershave is going to make it four. 

“No, I don’t,” she returns, biting into the dry toast he hands her where she’s seated at the table, still in her pajamas, chin in hand.

But she looks at him out of the corner of her eye, smirking. And he knows right then that even though she doesn’t have to, she will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 3 and chapter title are both from ["Farther Up the Road" by Vigilantes of Love](https://open.spotify.com/track/2VjT5I3KrLJnTaatBCviUI).
> 
> As with many other parts of this story, I've drawn on things from real life. The Fox and Flea is based on my favorite bookshop/cafe, the Savoy, in a small seaside town in Rhode Island. It used to be a hotel, which fell into disrepair, and has now been restored into a warm, gorgeous, and very interesting destination. [There are some great photos on their Yelp page](https://www.yelp.com/biz/savoy-bookshop-and-cafe-westerly) to help you visualize!

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title is from ["Farther Up the Road" by Vigilantes of Love](https://open.spotify.com/track/2VjT5I3KrLJnTaatBCviUI). I can't think of a more Priest and Fleabag / Phoebe and Andrew song to wrap it all up in a bow. 
> 
> The idea of Phoebe and Andrew opening a bookshop/cafe together, and calling it something cheeky like The Fox & Flea, was the seed of this whole epic story. If you're interested, The Fox & Flea is based on one of my favorite places in the world, the Savoy Bookshop in coastal Rhode Island. It was a boutique hotel that had fallen into disrepair and repurposed a few years back into an absolutely beautiful, warm, welcoming space packed with amazing books and serving delicious food. [Lots of great photos on their Yelp page here](https://www.yelp.com/biz/savoy-bookshop-and-cafe-westerly), to help you picture the type of thing they might build together.


End file.
